5 points make up the tips of a star, and 5 points make up the vertices of the inner pentagon i.e. the ‘Hub’.
The ‘5 Points’ in commercial mediation are:
· ‘Dynamic Commercial Drivers’ – i.e. each participant’s [‘P’s] wants, needs, priorities & reasons.
· ‘Litigation risk’ – costs incurred/could be incurred in going to trial & publicity.
· ‘The price of doing a deal that is enough’ i.e. the Mediation math.
· ‘Acknowledgement of common ground.’
· ‘Exploration of the hub to discover hidden common ground in order to close the gap & do a deal’ – see the diagram under the heading ‘Deal-Making Zone’ on the ‘Mediation of Music Disputes’ page at www.carlislam.co.uk.
See also my recent article published in print worldwide by Oxford University Press in Trusts & Trustees – ‘Mediating Probate & Trust Disputes – Process Challenges & Tools – Part 2′, in which I make the following observation about how Mediation is an opportunity to explore & discover the existence of common ground inside the Hub.
‘Think of a series of interlinked circles labelled e.g.: ‘Estate’; ‘P.1 Wants/Needs’; ‘P.2 Wants/Needs’; ‘Law’; ‘Tax-Efficiency’; ‘Hidden Commercial Value’; ‘Practical Ethics’; and ‘Inter-P Dynamics’. The alchemy in the mediation of a probate/trust dispute is to discover what lies in the centre, i.e. in that small space where these circles all overlap with each other (the ‘Hub’), because that is common ground. The Hub is also the zone in which a ‘Black Swan’ may exist. ‘Black Swans are events or pieces of knowledge that sit outside our regular expectations and therefore cannot be predicted.. … There are those things we know … Those are known knowns. There are those things we are certain that exist that we don’t know. … Those are known unknowns and they are like poker wild cards; you know they’re out there but you don’t know who has them. The most important are those things we don’t know that we don’t know, pieces of information we’ve never imagined that would be game changing if uncovered.. … These unknown unknowns are Black Swans. … Finding and acting on Black Swans mandates a shift in your mindset. It takes negotiation from being a one-dimensional move counter move game of checkers to a three-dimensional game that is more emotional, adaptive, intuitive … and truly effective.’[i]
A mediator needs to be aware of this concept and the importance of looking not only for what the P’s ‘don’t know’, but also for that what the P’s ‘don’t know that they don’t know’. …’ This the value of Mediation because no judge has the power to unlock what a trained mediator can help the partipants find and agree for themselves. That is because Mediation is a ‘process’ and not an ‘outcome’ driven method of dispute resolution which engages & involves imagination of a better future for all.
[i] Never Split The Difference – Negotiating as if your life depended on it’, by Chris Voss (2016), rh Business Books, p.216.